Alex Benson

Case Law The seminal Supreme Court case that deals with the issue of birthright citizenship is United States v. Wong Kim Ark, from 1898. In Wong Kim Ark the Court held that a child of transient Chinese nationals, but born in the United States, was automatically a citizen at the time of his birth. The […]

President Trump did something earlier this week that many thought he was incapable of doing: he surprised. In an interview with Axios posted this past Tuesday, October 30, the President voiced his intention to issue an executive order ending the longstanding Executive Department practice of conveying automatic “birthright citizenship” on all persons born in the […]

Socialism is not only death and repression, it is anarchy, too. Under socialism there is no means of coordinating economic activity. The planners plan for five years or they plan for ten, but the best they can do is guess what goods are needed and where they are needed most. Economic calculation is impossible without […]

Never in the history of the world has there been a more destructive weapon actually deployed than socialism with power. With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism in eastern Europe, the West looked to be rid of this most destructive ideology for good. Recently, however, an increasingly large faction within […]

Student debt outstanding has tripled since 2005 — soaring past 1.5 trillion earlier this year, according to the Federal Reserve. Furthermore, one in six borrowers has a debt burden that exceeds their annual income, leading to a long-term savings crisis that has the potential to explode in the future as 65% of those who owe […]

Maybe. Then again, probably not, and definitely not all on its own. We are now ten years removed from the beginning of the financial crisis that would become the Great Recession, and after all that time the mainstream explanation for the crisis can be summed up in one word: deregulation. But, what deregulation? That is […]

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report earlier this year titled “The Distribution of Household Income, 2014.” The report analyses a mountain of data from 2014, looking for trends in the distribution of income, taxation, transfers from federal government programs, inequality, and so on. Basically, the report looks at the actual data behind every […]

According to projections put out by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), government spending on servicing the interest on the national debt is set to increase by 70% in the next three years alone. The CBO projection is driven by two trends: 1) trillion-dollar deficits today and those projected in the President’s Budget; and, 2) rising […]

Despite slowing home sales and a tightening of Fed policy, the labor market in the United States continues to expand. Total job openings in the economy rose to 7.14 million in the month of August, up from the 7.08 million in July that had been the record. The job opening rate also hit a new […]

According to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), new single-family home sales fell again in the month of September — down 5.5% from August and 13.2% below the pace from a year ago. Sales in the Midwest Region increased by 6.9% from August and 4.1% from a year ago. The other three regions did […]

According to Reuters, the Trump Administration began the yearlong process of withdrawing from the Universal Postal Union on Wednesday, arguing that the organization costs the United States millions each year with its subsidies to foreign shippers. Established in 1874 with the Treaty of Berne, the Universal Postal Union is now an agency of the United […]

The Associated Press (AP) reports the federal budget deficit swelled to $779 billion in FY 2018, the largest level since 2012 and 17 percent higher than FY 2017.  Additionally, the Treasury Department forecasts the deficit will increase again in FY 2019, to over $1 trillion—the first time since 2012 the federal deficit would top the […]